Rimback: Shawnee makes believers of everyone

Tom Rimback @RimbackBCT

Saturday

Nov 23, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 23, 2013 at 7:54 PM

TOMS RIVER — Faith wouldn’t be enough. Only belief could save the Renegades.

After playing about as disastrous a first half of football as anyone could remember, the Shawnee faithful had no good reason to believe their team would come home a winner. But there were believers in the halftime locker room.

In the end, those Renegades made believers of everyone.

Down 24 unanswered points after four first-half turnovers, the Renegades scored four times, three in the fourth quarter to beat Toms River South 28-24. Shawnee will face Timber Creek for the South Jersey Group 4 championship in two weeks.

“In that locker room there was a lot of senior leadership,” sophomore quarterback Michael Welsh said. “We got our confidence back. It was a very bad first half.”

Welsh was 2 of 6 for 5 yards and an interception in the first half, and that was only because of an 8-yard pass on the last play of the half. He came out in the second half and promptly threw two incompletions, then his second interception. Still the Renegades never wavered, never went away from their game plan.

Not one single doubt?

“(I doubted) a little bit,” Welsh said. “My teammates really picked me up. They really instilled the confidence in me that we could get it done.”

Those words were an echo of Shawnee’s last visit to Toms River. In 2002, in another S.J. Group 4 semifinal, the Renegades found themselves trailing Toms River North 21-0 in the fourth quarter. Shawnee won that game, too, 24-21 in overtime.

“We started to get our confidence in the third quarter,” Shawnee quarterback Billy Kurtz said in 2002. “We finally got some good things going. Once we got to the fourth quarter we knew we could win.”

That was 11 years ago. Welsh might be the only current Shawnee player to remember that game. His father Tim was a Shawnee assistant coach, and now is the offensive coordinator. His teammates were filled in on the details in the locker room.

“We did talk about it,” Shawnee coach Tim Gushue said. “As we left the field at halftime, Dick Brown, one of my coaches from the mid-’60s said to me: ‘Don’t forget what happened the last time you were in this town.’ We reminded them of that.”

In ‘02, seniors Kurtz and receiver Dan McDonald reverted to a no-huddle, up-tempo offense that they had last used as freshmen to erase a three-touchdown deficit.

Saturday, Welsh and running back Anthony DiOrio had an entire half to establish the Shawnee power running game that wore the Indians down. DiOrio ran 22 times for 137 yards and a TD. After two carries for a dozen first-half yards, Welsh ran 12 times for 45 more and a TD after the break.

And through the air, Welsh rebounded from his 2 of 9, two-interception start to finish the day hitting on 5 of his last 6 passes for 103 yards and two touchdowns.

“We started believing from the beginning,” Welsh said. “We really had the confidence in each other. This is a great win for us.”

Believing. There’s that word again.

The Renegades were well on their way to getting blown off the field. The temptation to scrap everything to make up 24 points had to be overwhelming. Instead the Renegades doubled down on each other.

“We just wanted out guys to come out and play a better 24 minutes,” Gushue said. “Just keep competing. Keep working. Don’t look at the scoreboard and take the next step.”

Shawnee took that step. Then two. Soon enough they were on the dead run. The Renegades scored the game-winner with just over two minutes left, then stopped the Indians on fourth down in the final 30 seconds.

The Renegades reached into their past for another once-in-a-lifetime comeback, a comeback four decades sooner than their coach predicted.

“I told our coaches that I’ve always envisioned winning a game like that,” Gushue said in 2002. “You can coach 50 years and never see another game like that.”

Follow Us

Advertise

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Burlington County Times ~ 116 Burrs Rd., Suite B, Westampton, NJ 08060 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service